The Man Who Would Not Be President
Roger Cohen NOV. 18, 2016
What was evident during the campaign is more apparent after Donald Trump’s election: Mr. Trump is deeply ambivalent about becoming president. He’d rather stay in his lavish New York penthouse. Policy is a headache. It requires concentration. There are annoying laws against nepotism. Trump won 4.1 percent of the vote in the District of Columbia. Washington does not pine for him.
It all began as a game, turned into an ego trip and ended in a strange apotheosis. Trump has uncanny instincts but no firm ideas. He knows the frisson authority confers. A rich boy from Queens who made good in Manhattan, he understands the galvanizing force of playing the outsider card. A man who changed his past, purging German lineage for “Swedish,” he understands America’s love for the outsized invented life. For his victory he depended on America’s unique gift for amnesia.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/19/opinion/the-man-who-would-not-be-president.html?src=me
